Monday, July 18, 2005

I'd call this a slam dunk...

There is lots of stuff happening in the Rove case...none of it good for the Administration.

From this week’s Time Magazine – Matthew Cooper, “What I told the Grand Jury:”

As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which. Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the "agency"--by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred that he obviously meant the CIA and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency. Rove added that she worked on "WMD" (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife.

I believe the nickname for the CIA is "The Agency." Unlike the spin that the White House was trying to put on Cooper's email, it seems that Rove WAS the first to inform Mr. Cooper of Wilson's wife's CIA connections.

Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status. I told the grand jury something else about my conversation with Rove. Although it's not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, "I've already said too much." This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don't know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.

Hmmmmmm...makes it hard to believe that Rove had NO IDEA that he was doing anything wrong.

WASHINGTON, July 18 - President Bush changed his stance today on his close adviser Karl Rove, stopping well short of promising that anyone in his administration who helped to unmask a C.I.A. officer would be fired.

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Mr. Bush said in response to a question, after declaring, "I don't know all the facts; I want to know all the facts."

For months, Mr. Bush and his spokesmen have said that anyone involved in the disclosure of the C.I.A. officer's identity would be dismissed. The president's apparent raising of the bar for dismissal today, to specific criminal conduct, comes amid mounting evidence that, at the very least, Mr. Rove provided backhanded confirmation of the C.I.A. officer's identity.

Bush has previously indicated that he would fire anyone who leaked Plame's identity.

In 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the suggestion that Rove was involved in the leak was "ridiculous."

McClellan said in a Sept. 29, 2003, briefing: "The president has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

There is no doubt that Rove leaked Mrs. Wilson's identity as a CIA agent. There is no doubt that Rove, in the very least, is involved in it (as are others in the Administration).

Not only did President Bush lie, he forced his Press Secretary to lie as well.